


you're a hero (i'm a myth)

by KilltheDJ



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: California (Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 19:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29721801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheDJ/pseuds/KilltheDJ
Summary: The Girl's day-to-day, as she grows up alone, with grief on her head like a crown and anger to start a war.
Relationships: The Girl & The Girl's Cat (Fabulous Killjoys), The Phoenix Witch & The Girl
Comments: 10
Kudos: 8





	you're a hero (i'm a myth)

**Author's Note:**

> i've already eluded to it in the tags and the warnings, but ! graphic depictions of violence and death at points!

She’s seven when she makes the deal. 

She’s seven, standing on the precipice of having to make her own decisions without a guiding hand on her shoulder, boots soaked in sand - up to the ankles - standing in front of the Mailbox in Zone 2. 

Her Cat is sitting on her shoulders, meowing softly but not interrupting - Cat doesn’t know  _ what  _ it might be interrupting, and it’s right to stay away. 

She shouldn’t do this. 

The Girl is seven-years-old and just watched her protectors, her parents, die. Not for the first time, no - she’s already got one dead mother to her name and now she’s adding four more to the mix, but… but maybe… but maybe if she does this… 

_ No,  _ a voice in her head says, one that isn’t hers. One she recognizes as the familiar lilt of the Phoenix Witch, speaking through her without needing the energy to manifest.  _ Your grief is a brittle, fragile thing. Fragile things must be broken before they may be fixed.  _

She’s used to the constant advice, by now, but she doesn’t  _ want  _ it. 

The Girl scowls, her chipped blue-and-gold nails close to the metal, painted surface of the Mailbox. It wouldn’t take much. 

Electricity and  _ power  _ \- the real, magic kind, the kind that powers deities and miracles - don’t mix. She knows that. She’s never been to the Mailbox because she’s never been allowed to go - stayed at home with Kobra rather than go out and pray with Jet and Ghoul. 

They’re all dead, now, so it doesn’t matter whether she wants to go or not, anymore. 

“I’m not  _ fragile, _ ” she tells herself, or rather the lingering deity, and Cat paws at her face in agreement. 

With that, she touches the Mailbox, teeth grit with  _ hope.  _

She doesn’t remember much, other than the spark of electricity up her spine and the taste of sand in her mouth. 

(Cat remembers more. Cat remembers jumping to the ground after the Girl starts falling, standing by with a paw over her chest as she became something more than human, more than technology.) 

_ 

_ You’re no girl anymore,  _ the Witch tells her, when she’s nine and standing in the burnt husk of what used to be an airport. The airplanes are still there. 

They might even be usable. But there are no pilots around anymore and she’s the only one with a walking power source powerful enough to keep a jet engine in the air, thousands of feet above the ground, and that’s not on her bucket list. 

Instead, she’s camping out underneath one of the hulls of the plane, sleeping bag - one of Ghoul’s, they were closest in size after all - filled with various ratty blankets, one sleepy Cat, and some granola bars. 

This time, the Witch manifests. 

The Phoenix Witch herself is something to behold. She’s everything and nothing at once, all-powerful and yet powerless; the guide of the dead with a death to her name and broken, jagged pieces left behind in the sand, covered in crow’s feathers. 

Her mask, made of the ivory strands of fate, fits perfectly over her face, distorting that might be beneath with a halo of iridescent crow’s feathers fanning out behind her, turning into a feathered cape that drags across the ground. 

The Girl simply hums. “Nice of you to join me. Care for a granola bar?” 

_ “You are not meant to lie in waste,”  _ the Witch says, instead of taking the offer. As per usual, her voice is garbled and distorted, something like a thousand voices hitting the same note.  _ “Why do you continue to waste your potential?”  _

“Because it’s not like I’m playing Dance Dance Revolution. I’m great at Dance Dance Revolution, by the way.” 

The Witch frowns. It’s not visible, but it’s not unnoticeable. _ “I do not understand. This is not relevant.”  _

“‘Your grief is a brittle, fragile thing,’” the Girl quotes, digging around in her sleeping bag to find Cat, to pet their head to keep from snapping. It’s unwise to snap around so much  _ metal,  _ so many things that require just a jumpstart. “My grief is something that grows, Witch, molds to the situation. I don’t  _ want  _ potential, and that’s what you don’t understand.” 

_ “You are young. You do not understand.”  _

“I understand perfectly. I’m young, not stupid. I grew up with the best and they died with me, so I’ll just keep the family tradition going.” 

_ “You are not old enough to understand the notion of tradition, not in its entirety.”  _

“You’re too far removed to understand growing up.” 

And the Girl leaves it at that. 

Ironically enough, she’s found that the Witch can’t manifest for all that long around her; it’s something that comes in handy when the Witch tries to act like a guide, a mentor despite the fact that leading by death always causes another massacre. 

Or maybe the Girl’s just biased, because she is. 

Cat simply looks up at her, emerald eyes glimmering out from underneath the sleeping bag, and nuzzles against the hand scratching behind their ear. (The Girl needs the comfort, not them, and they are happy to provide it.) 

_

She’s thirteen the first time she blows something up. 

It’s not intentional. She’s got a metal bat in one hand, a ray gun in the other, a set-up of tin cans in the distance, and she  _ can’t fucking hit them.  _

She’s never been the best with a blaster, despite the fact that she’d grown up with the best and learned to hold a ray gun before she learned what a  _ binky  _ was, but it’s not her  _ strong suit.  _

And the Girl can’t go Drac-hunting if she can’t  _ hit  _ anything, and, now, that’s a tradition she’s finally old enough to carry out. ‘Sides, it’s a dying activity in the Zones and the Killjoys appearing are just  _ lackluster;  _ they got the style, but not the soul, and it wears down their boots quicker than a Drac in Left Hall with a communicator. 

It’s  _ frustrating,  _ it’s fucking frustrating, she grew up with the best sharp-shooters in the Zones - one of whom  _ double-wielded,  _ and that’s notoriously hard - and she can’t hit a  _ can  _ from ten-feet away. 

Yeah, it’s fucking ridiculous, and she knows that. 

The ray gun is firing at double power than the battery pack permits and she knows that; electricity tastes sharp and bitter under her tongue when her finger pulls the trigger for the fifth time in as many minutes and the can stays upright, battered and unyielding to her - her - her  _ bad fucking skills.  _

Cat doesn’t seem to mind, at least, but the Girl doesn’t dare reach over to pet them. Her hair keeps getting in her eyes and she’s needed to braid it back, for a while now, but she just hasn’t found the time. 

But it’s not like she has a mirror and it’s not like she has anyone who can do it for her.

_ Fuck.  _

“Cat,” the Girl starts, hesitantly, clutching the ray gun so tightly her hands hurt. “This is pointless. I’m good enough with a bat, right?” 

Cat simply lets out a loud  _ mrrrrrowwwwww  _ and the Girl takes that as confirmation. 

She scowls, dropping the electrified ray gun on the ground, and Cat takes that as permission to jump on her shoulders. 

And Cat’s good a good sense of  _ danger,  _ should know that the Girl is still electrified, still got glowing white eyes and blue over the veins in her wrist, but it’s too loud and Cat’s claws dig into her shoulder and - 

It’s  _ fine.  _ Cat’s fine; they curl up on her shoulders and nuzzles their head against her cheek in clear content. 

Behind her, the ray gun  _ pops.  _

She doesn’t look behind her to see the damage, but she supposes the electricity had to go somewhere; she’s officially powered-down for the day. 

Although, the Dracs on patrol sure aren’t going to think so when their blood paves Route Guano like a goddamn war cry. And maybe it is; a war cry for what she’s lost. 

If her grief is a fragile, brittle thing, then she’s  _ already  _ broken it, because it feels as sturdy in her head as the bat does in her hand. 

_ 

She’s fifteen when she meets death again, like an old friend. 

She’s standing on Dreams Boulevard, the place where she’d first driven the Trans Am when Jet propped her up on their lap and let her steer (and she drove  _ straight  _ into a pole, but she was four and didn’t know there still  _ were  _ telephone poles.) 

Dreams Boulevard hasn’t changed much since then. Warn pavement, sand-covered crevices that kind creatures that rely on the fact that no one with an engine is stupid enough to go over the Boulevard. 

And bodies. 

Bodies, blood, and the  _ red red red  _ that she’s come to know as a graveyard calling from a mile away. Technicolor and monochrome, both dead scenes aligning for one last  _ fuck you  _ underneath the sun. 

All that to say that it’s another firefight gone wrong with too many bodies for WKIL to understand the depth of Death. Five Drac patrols of twelve - the Girl had heard wind and came out as soon as she could.

But clearly, she wasn’t quick enough, considering two crews of eight lie dead. Sixteen killjoys and sixty Dracs. 

It was never a fair fight. There were straggling Dracs, but she’d put them out of their misery with a star-painted baseball bat and went on. 

Oh, that’s a lot of masks to take to the Mailbox, and the Witch is standing by, she knows; hidden by the realm of unreality that separates the divine from the electrical, watching her with a frown.  _ “It is not your fault, little one.”  _

“I’m not so little anymore,” the Girl corrects, and she knows that she’s hit the mark when the Witch takes a tentative step back, both literally and metaphorically. “And it isn’t my fault, you’re right. Some of the few that aren’t. Are you going to help me, or not.” 

_ “You know I am unable to touch the dead when their masks have not been presented to me.”  _

“Sometimes rules can be bent. I’m taking the masks to the Mailbox in Zone 4.” 

The Witch nods decisively.  _ “I will take you there,”  _ she says, and sometimes the Girl knows it's the misplaced mother’s sympathy that guides the Witch to not giving up on her. 

It’s not the Girl’s job to save the Zones, to liberate the city and everyone in it. She was a kid, and she still is a kid, but the Witch just won’t give it up, like a mother watching her daughter flounder underneath the weight of her schooling. 

(If violence, rock ‘n roll, and broken kneecaps count for schooling.) 

Maybe it’s because the Witch is grieving, too. Time works differently for deities, the Girl knows, and while she’s come to terms with the graves that line the inside of the ditch at The End of the Line, perhaps the Witch isn’t. Perhaps she’s mourning her son. 

Perhaps she’s mourning her daughter, too - the Girl hasn’t spoken to NewsAGoGo in a long time, and she’s heard something about Tommy selling radio equipment down at Paradise Motel. 

That would explain why DJ Hot Chimp’s radio station has been nothing more than half-formed, coded plans detailing more than what one person can pull off. (A break-in to the City’s highest security buildings. Yeah, the Girl knows that one  _ intimately.  _ Ironic, isn’t it?) 

It doesn’t matter. The Witch’s business is her own, and the Girl feels a swell of guilt welling up in her chest when her boot actually hits on the ear of someone lying on the ground, glassy-eyed stare with tear tracks cutting through the dirt. 

She doesn’t  _ know  _ any of these people, these  _ corpses,  _ but that doesn’t mean she can’t be a respectful guide. 

Death is something that’s always going to come to call, but it means that she needs to be on her toes to make sure it’s not going to carve  _ her  _ heart out. 

She’s had that happen enough, thank you very much. 

_ 

_ “You view life not as the entirety, death not as finality. It’s rare for someone so young in her years.”  _

“Leave me alone,” the Girl scowls. 

Cat, of course, sympathetically paws at her elbow, but that’s going nothing to make the combination of cramps and the ray gun wound on her thigh any better. 

The Witch,  _ of course,  _ doesn’t care much for her pain.  _ “I am requesting your assistance in understanding. The world waits for you, as it always will, but you know it is not the only thing waiting for you. How?”  _

“I come from a long line of people that say ‘ _ fuck you’  _ to destiny,” the Girl shrugs, and then she remembers why she was curled up into a ball on the floor of the kitchen of the Nest in the first place. She’s lucky it’s empty this time of the week. “I’m inclined to continue it.” 

_ “When will you stop fighting the path laid out for you?”  _

And perhaps she’s feeling particularly bitter because she loops her arm around Cat’s body and pulls them close, and smiles as she tells the Witch, “when it stops killing everyone around me.” 

_ 

She meets Val Velocity two weeks later. 

She can’t help but feel something in her  _ break  _ when Volume dies, and it has nothing to do with her, but everything to do with this destiny she can’t avoid. 

(The Witch doesn’t speak to her for a month. It’s for the best, she supposes.) 

**Author's Note:**

> i definitely wrote this while i was supposed to be in class and now i don't know what to do for my final project but at least i didn't have to listen. thank you... and perhaps your thoughts would be nice.


End file.
